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Gene Variant Might Lead To Personalized Treatment of Chemotherapy

Cancer has been one of the top most killer diseases around the world. Many people go through treatments like chemotherapy, which itself is a bit life-threatening. There have been many cases of breast cancers where women have had some serious side-effects from undergoing chemotherapy. There are over 48,000 women in UK that suffer from breast cancer each year out of which at latest 20,000 go through chemotherapy.

Till date it was very difficult to propose which females would have their side effects which led to a lot of women suffering extra. Now doctors have discovered a way of identifying breast cancer patients who are most likely to suffer these life-threatening side effects from chemotherapy. It comes as a big boon for all the patients as it would eventually lead to safer treatment which could be adapted to individual patients.

In a study of over 1,000 breast cancer patients, nearly 17% went through the side effects of the treatment due to which they needed extra hospital care due to potential fatal infections after being induced by three common chemotherapy drugs. But there was also a peculiar finding that emerged from this study. Researchers found that around 15% of women had a gene variant which was linked to the side effects. This could open door to a wider study into the potential patients that could suffer from these side effects.

According to lead researcher Dr. Christof Vulsteke, of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, the study could lead through a breakthrough which might turn out to be a deciding factor in enlisting potential patients beforehand that might have side-effects from chemotherapy. He added that this research has brought them closer to providing personalized treatment to patient depending on this gene variant.